Monthly Archives: June 2012

Noel Murray thinks trailers are ruining movies. I think so, too. There are movies I feel like I've seen even though I haven't seen them.

Ed Kilgore explains why everything Mitt Romney is promising to do to fix Health Care in this country is moonshine. It's the illusion of making things better while, in fact, making them worse.

Five minutes of Johnny with Buddy Hackett…

As several folks have informed me, there's a new way to get into Comic-Con: Go on The Price is Right. On yesterday's show, the second showcase included a laptop computer, a subscription to read digital Marvel Comics on that computer, two tickets to Comic-Con in San Diego (including Preview Night), limo service to the con from Los Angeles and four nights in a hotel in the Gaslamp District. Oh, yeah…and there was also a new car. What would a Price is Right showcase be without a new car or two?

There does not seem to be an excerpt online but CBS does have the entire hour-long show on its site. If you want to sit through a lot of online commercials, you can watch it here but it isn't particularly a memorable episode or segment.

So…wanna guess the price? The showcase includes a one-year subscription to Marvel's digital service, a MacBook Pro with a 15" screen, two tickets to Comic-Con, a limo ride from L.A. to the con and four nights in a "luxury hotel" near the convention center. Oh, yeah…and I keep forgetting the car, which is a 2013 Hyundai Sonata GLS. What do you bid? The winner is the person who comes closest to the actual retail price, rounded off to the nearest dollar, without going over.

When you're ready, clicking this link should give you the answer. (more…)

For the first part of this story, click here.  For the second part of this story, click here.  If you're up to speed, proceed to the next paragraph — and I warn you: I'm not going to finish this time.

It was 2002 and the big Comic-Con International was soon to occur in San Diego.  I had been drafted into service as the wholly unnecessary moderator of a panel with Ray Bradbury and his first agent, Julius Schwartz.  This was obviously a fine idea for a panel in and of itself but the reason it was arranged was because Julie, God love him, was looking for a way to convince the convention organizers that they should agree to pay to bring him out to the convention.  And agree they did.

So two weeks before the con (he says, subtly shifting tenses), I get a call from one of those organizers.  I'm not certain which one but I'm thinking it was Gary Sassaman.  That con has a lot of organizers.  Whoever it was, he reminds me that Al Feldstein is a Guest of Honor that year, which I know because I'm already hosting two or more panels on which Al is appearing —

— and really looking forward to them.  I have a lot of heroes in comics and Al Feldstein is high on the list.  He'd be up there just for his stewardship of MAD magazine for 29 years.  Those included the year I discovered it and it had a profound impact, wholly for the better, on this sense of humor that I've somehow been able to parlay into not just a career but an approach to life.  That Feldstein also wrote and edited some of the best comics ever for EC has always been kind of a bonus reason for me to admire the guy.

"Al called," the person who may have been Gary Sassaman says.  "He never met Ray Bradbury and was wondering if he could crash the panel you're hosting with Ray and Julie."

The first-ever meeting between Bradbury and the man who adapted his work for EC Comics? Sounds like a great idea to me but it doesn't sound like one to Julie when I run it by him.  "This is a panel about Ray and me," he says.  "Not Ray and Al Feldstein.  If you want to do a panel about them, talk to Ray and see if he'll do a separate panel with Al."  But of course when he says this, Julie knows full well that Bradbury will only do one program event each year…and the following year, Al Feldstein won't be a Guest of Honor at the con.

I can make the case for Julie's viewpoint: He did arrange this event and he arranged it as the two of them.  Julie's role in Ray's early career has gone somewhat unheralded and I assume (correctly, I later learn) that one of Ray's reasons for doing the joint appearance is that he wants to shine some light on his friend that way.  It's also going to be the biggest event Julie has ever done at the con.  Ordinarily, he's on panels where the audience is in the hundreds.  This time because of Ray, the crowd will be in the thousands.  When Julie starts lobbying the con to make him a Guest in 2003, which he will do, it won't hurt to point out that he was half of one of the most important, well-attended panels of '02. Add Feldstein into it and Julie could easily become an extra at an event in which he was supposed to co-star.

But I also think this: Ray Bradbury and Al Feldstein finally meeting is a historic moment…and it will happen.  It will happen at that convention, somewhere.  If it's not on a panel in front of an audience, I will drag Al over and introduce him to Ray in the dealer's room or in the professional lounge or at adjacent urinals in the men's room or somewhere.  It would be nice if I wasn't the only witness to this event and if it wasn't in the men's room.

The next thing that happens is that I speak with Al.  In his account of the panel which I will quote here before we're done, he recalls that I phoned him and said, "I'm hosting the panel."  I recall him calling me and saying, "I hear you're hosting the panel."  Whatever the sequence of events, I tell him to come to the panel and sit in the front row or as close as he can get.  I will find an opening to bring him up on stage no matter what Julie wants. I then coordinate with the con's Programming Director — who at the time was, I'm sure, Gary Sassaman — and the schedule is slightly rearranged. Al Feldstein has a panel of his own that day showing off the fine work he's been doing in retirement as a painter and it was opposite the Bradbury-Schwartz coffee klatsch. It is moved to later in the day so as to not conflict.

So now it's Saturday, August 3, fifteen minutes or so before the panel.  Julie comes up to me and suggests that we start the panel with just him and me on stage.  The idea is that I will introduce him first since Ray is, as Julie readily agrees, the bigger celebrity.  That's the way to do it but Julie wants Ray to then make an entrance and this I am against.  Ray is walking poorly, being wheelchaired around the con, and there is no wheelchair lift for the stage. Instead, there are stairs he will have to ascend using a walker. Since there's no curtain there, he's going to have to do that in full view of the audience with people assisting him.  Better to have that sad awkwardness before the panel starts when the audience won't be paying as much attention…and applauding.

Julie says, "If he doesn't make an entrance, he won't get a standing ovation.  Ray deserves a standing ovation."

I say, "I absolutely agree he deserves a standing ovation.  He will get a standing ovation."

Julie says, "Not if he's already on stage.  He needs to make an entrance for that to happen."

I assure Julie — nay, I promise him — that even though the panel will start with Ray Bradbury already seated on stage, he will receive a standing ovation when I introduce him.

Someone wheels Ray to the edge of the stage and he climbs the stairs holding onto bannisters on either side and then uses a walker to get to his chair.  It takes a while and I'm glad we are not trying to do this after the panel starts and all eyes are on him.  A minute or two before the start time, Ray is comfortably seated between Julie and me.  That's when Julie comes over and whispers, "This was a mistake.  The audience is not going to give him a standing ovation now."

I offer to bet Julie $25,000 that the audience will give Ray Bradbury a standing ovation.  Julie mutters something about how he hopes I know what I'm doing and returns to his seat.

The panel begins with me introducing myself as quickly as I can.  I then introduce Julie and take a few moments to recount his immense contributions to the worlds of comic books and science-fiction.  He receives a very nice round of applause from somewhere between 4000 and 5000 people who have come to this event.

Then I yell out — and I did this in actual italicized capital letters — "AND WOULD YOU SHOW YOUR LOVE FOR THE BEST DAMN WRITER OF SCIENCE-FICTION AND FANTASY THE BUSINESS HAS EVER SEEN, MR. RAY BRADBURY!"  Before I even get near the "MR.", those four to five thousand people are on their feet, cheering and clapping and stomping and just plain loving Mr. Ray Bradbury. The ovation is so thunderous that videogame companies exhibiting in the hall downstairs call to complain about the noise.

You want to know why I host so many panels at conventions, folks?  It's so that every so often, I can feel like I made something like that happen. They would have leaped up for him anyway but I got to feel like I'd given Ray a little gift.  It's a real thrill and as an added attraction, I can look over at Julie with a stare in my direction for which he should have paid royalties to the Jack Benny Estate.  It's one of those "Okay, so I was wrong" looks that us writers love to get from editors.

As the applause is dying out and the crowd is settling back down into its seats, I look out and see Al Feldstein in the third row, sitting down in unison with everyone else.  And I think, "Y'know, if I ever have something called a 'blog' and I ever tell this story on it, this would be a good time to leave everyone with a cliffhanger and tell them they'll have to come back tomorrow to read the conclusion."

Click here to jump to the conclusion of this story.

Number two hundred and fifty-seven in a series…

Southwest is that rarest of airlines these days: The kind making money. This article mentions some of the reasons and I'll mention three more…

1. They seem to go the right places at the right time. Well, at least they do for me. I fly Southwest about 80% of the time when I fly. I rarely find a case where another carrier has a flight leaving at a time that would be better for me. The only time that's happened in a while was my recent trip to and from Indianapolis. When I'd flown there in the past on business, I took Southwest because their flights left and arrived at times that would work for me. They've now discontinued those particular flights but as it turns out, and this is perhaps not a coincidence, Delta added flights at those exact same times.
2. There's just a friendliness about Southwest. The people who work there seem happy to be working there…and not so beleaguered doing half a hundred things that they don't have time to answer a question.
3. This is like the second one but not quite. When things go wrong, as happens with any airline, I've always found it easy to find an appropriate Southwest employee to assist me. I have a couple of horror stories about an airline that will remain nameless (it was United) that seemed to think, "Hey, we can save money by not having any employees who can help folks with problems."

So there's three reasons they're doing so well. A fourth might be that there's bucks to be made if when I fly anywhere, my suitcase isn't put on the same plane as me. I don't know how this can be so lucrative for them but it must be, given how often they do it.

Former Republican state party official Michael Stafford on why he can no longer be a member of that party.

This is not the next chapter of the Ray Bradbury/Julius Schwartz/Al Feldstein story. That'll be along later tonight…or maybe some time tomorrow, the rate I'm going. But a lot of people have written in either to ask who all those folks are in the photo I posted with the second installment or to tell me. So let's go over them, shall we?

We'll start with the back row. The woman on the left is apparently (there's some question) Myrtle R. Douglas, described by Forrest J Ackerman as his "significant other" of the time. She was a science-fiction fan Forry had met while studying Esperanto and she made the futuristic costume he wore to portions of the event where this photo was taken — the first World Science-Fiction Convention.

Next over is Julius Schwartz, who was one of the organizers of the convention and at the time, a partner in the Solar Sales Service Literary Agency — the only agency to specialize in science-fiction stories. He would later become an editor for DC Comics for around four decades and a lot of great comics.

To the right of Julie is Otto Binder, then an up-and-coming writer for the s-f pulps who had just begun writing for comic books. He would soon become the main writer for the original Captain Marvel and (later) one of the main Superman writers.

Next over is Mort Weisinger, who had been Julie Schwartz's partner in founding the Solar Sales Service agency…and before that, in publishing the first s-f fanzine. By the time of this photo, I believe Weisinger had turned the agency over to Schwartz and become an editor for Standard Magazines, publishers of several of the top pulp magazines. Like his partner, Weisinger would later become a longtime editor for DC Comics, primarily on the Superman titles.

On the far right is Jack Darrow, an active contributor to s-f fanzines.

Second row, first position we have Forrest J Ackerman, who's probably best known today as the founder-editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Forry was a rabid collector of s-f and horror movie material, an expert on those topics and to many, an avuncular figure at conventions and throughout fandom.

Next over is Ross Rocklynne, a popular science-fiction author of the day and a Guest of Honor at the convention.

Then we have Charles D. Hornig, who was the publisher of Fantasy Fan, one of the earliest s-f fanzines.

…and then we have Ray Bradbury. No further identification needed.

Thanks to Buddy Lortie, Anthony LeBlanc, Steve Thompson and I think someone else who sent in info on these folks. There's a lot of history there for one photo.

Here's a press release that went out today.  I think we done good…

Frank Doyle, Steve Skeates to Receive Bill Finger Award

SAN DIEGO – Frank Doyle and Steve Skeates have been selected to receive the 2012 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The choice, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

The Bill Finger Award was instituted in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. Each year, the awards committee selects two recipients, one living and one deceased.

"There have been way too many writers in this industry who have not received their rightful reward and/or recognition," Evanier explains. "The idea Jerry had was that this award could at least supply a little of that recognition for folks who have, like the man for which it is named, an impressive body of work. Frank Doyle, with his thousands of uncredited scripts for Archie is a perfect example. So is Steve Skeates, who wrote some of the brightest, cleverest scripts in comics in the late sixties and early seventies."

Frank Doyle started in comics as an artist, drawing for Fiction House and other companies before deciding that his true calling was as a writer. He began writing for Archie Comics in 1951 and soon became their most prolific writer, handling not only Archie, Betty and Veronica, Jughead, and other Riverdale titles but also the She's Josie comic, "That Wilkin Boy," and just about every other funny strip the company published. Archie editor Victor Gorelick recalls, "Frank wrote a story every day and on Monday, he'd usually hand in a two-parter he wrote over the weekend." An exact tally is impossible, but everyone familiar with Doyle's output agrees he authored more than 10,000 stories for the firm before his passing in 1996.

Steve Skeates began his comic book career as an assistant to Stan Lee (his replacement when he left was Roy Thomas) and then wrote westerns for Marvel, numerous scripts for Tower's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Undersea Agent. For Charlton he worked on, among others, The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves, Thane of Bagarth, Kid Montana, Abbott and Costello, and Sarge Steel. At DC, he handled Aquaman, The Hawk and the Dove, and numerous stories for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Supergirl, and Plop, among others. He also worked for Warren, Gold Key, Atlas, and Red Circle Comics.

The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist-historian Jim Amash, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The 2012 awards are being underwritten by DC Comics (the major sponsor), along with supporting sponsors Maggie Thompson and Heritage Auctions.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con on Friday, July 13.

Additional information on the Finger Award can be found at http://comic-con.org/cci/cci_finger.php

Ken Levine is the man who's actually had more careers than Larry King has had wives. Ken was a disc jockey. Ken was and I guess still is a top, Emmy-getting TV comedy writer and showrunner, plus somewhere in there he became a director and also a screenwriter. He did all these things so well that he also became a sportscaster and now he's branching out into writing books. All of this, of course, yields mere pocket change compared to his lucrative, Romney-like income as a top blogger.

Why the desperate overachieving? All part of a sad, obvious plan to stay so busy that he can't have lunch with me again…and he's wasting his time and energy because right now, I'm too busy to have lunch with him. But I wasn't too busy to order his new book called, as you can see above, The Me Generation…by Me.  It's all about growing up in the sixties not far from where I grew up in the sixties…to the extent either of us grew up at all.  If you're familiar with Ken's essays from his blog — a truly funny blog in the web-desert of folks trying way too hard to write truly funny blogs — no further sales pitch is necessary. Darn near everything he writes makes you want to "pull a Berle" and claim it as your own.

Order a copy here. And then listen in as Ken guests later today (Wednesday) on Stu's Show, the Internet's foremost place for folks in television to talk about themselves. Your chummy host Stu Shostak will be interviewing Ken for two hours (and maybe more) starting at 4 PM Pacific Time which is 7 PM Eastern Time and other times in other zones. The point is the show is live, meaning you can listen in as they do it, which I suggest. It's more fun that way and it's also free. After the show "airs" ("bytes?"), you can download it from the Stu's Show website for a buck…or the bargain price of four different Stu's Shows for three bucks. Go to www.stussshow.com to do any of this. If they do call-ins, someone ask Ken to tell the story of the times he had writing auditions (separate) with Allan Carr and Traci Lords, and also find out if they were dressed the same.

The opening number for last Sunday night's Tony Awards…

Dick Cavett writes about how it feels to write a joke for someone else to tell…which of course means that (a) the other guy gets the laugh and (b) most people assume he came up with that witty, funny thing to say. I was always fine with that. I mean, it was kinda part of the job description.

My brows did a Groucho though when I came across Mr. Cavett saying this: "…surprising as it may seem, I never knew a staff comedy writer who yearned to be the Star." Maybe because I got into comedy writing a decade or more after he did, my experience was different. In a six-person comedy writing staff, I'd say half not only yearned to be the Star but were sure they were just as good 'n' entitled, if not better and more entitled, than the person who was. It got worse as you had people like Chevy Chase, Al Franken, Chris Elliott and others who were initially hired as writers, segued to performing on their shows and eventually went on to bigger, better things.

I think I owe you a story I promised a while back about how I wound up (briefly) not only performing but — God help us — dancing once on a TV show I wrote. After I finish the Bradbury/Feldstein/Schwartz epic, I'll try to get to it.